Decomposition strategy for the global optimization of flexible energy polygeneration systems

Abstract The optimal design and operation of flexible energy polygeneration systems using coal and biomass to coproduce power, liquid fuels, and chemicals are investigated. This problem is formulated as a multiperiod optimization problem, which is a potentially large‐scale nonconvex mixed‐integer nonlinear program (MINLP) and cannot be solved to global optimality by state‐of‐the‐art global optimization solvers, such as BARON, within a reasonable time. A duality‐based decomposition method, which can exploit the special structure of this problem, is applied. In this work, the decomposition method is enhanced by the introduction of additional dual information for faster convergence. The enhanced decomposition algorithm (EDA) guarantees to find an ε‐optimal solution in a finite time. The case study results show that the EDA achieves much faster convergence than both BARON and the original decomposition algorithm, and it solved the large‐scale nonconvex MINLPs to ε‐optimality in practical times. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 58: 3080–3095, 2012